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Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Rest In Peace, Aunty Mak Fong 楓姨,一路好走



Mak Fong


Yesterday, I found out with sadness that the veteran actress Mak Fong 麦楓 had passed away after a brief battle with lung cancer. She was 77.

Monday, February 27, 2012

Regarding the Oscars...

The Oscars is just a few hours away, and if I don't oversleep until the afternoon, I might be able to catch its live stream on my computer.

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Tuesday, February 07, 2012

Friday, February 03, 2012

Directing Life - article about me on Style: Magazine (Jan 2012)

I never imagined myself ever appearing on Style: Magazine. Ever. Not in my wildest dreams. Life is pretty insane. But here's Nicole Foo Bihzhu's feature on me at Style: Magazine.

I have to thank my old secondary school classmate Jesly Hieng once again, for scanning this. I was unable to find the magazine anywhere since I got back!

Directing Life (Style magazine, Jan 2012)


Wednesday, February 01, 2012

2nd Q&A session. LAST FRAGMENTS OF WINTER/ GIRL IN THE WATER @ International Film Festival Rotterdam 2012

On the 27th of January, after being much better-rested, I did the second Q and A session for LAST FRAGMENTS OF WINTER and GIRL IN THE WATER moderated by Paolo Bertolin. This one's pretty long since a kindly audience member was willing to help me film the entire session!

The entire thing lasted for more than half an hour... which was, er, actually longer than the running time of LAST FRAGMENTS OF WINTER (23 minutes), but I trimmed it down to spare your eyes and ears. I talked quite a bit about both short films, anecdotes during the film shoot and many others.

Here's the video.

Talking about the short films LAST FRAGMENTS OF WINTER and GIRL IN THE WATER @ International Film Festival Rotterdam 2012

I got back from Rotterdam yesterday after spending three nights at the festival. Everything was like a blur, my stay there was so brief (last year, I spent a week in Rotterdam before heading off to Clermont-Ferrand for another week). Already, I'm prepping for a short film shoot in the next few days.

Arriving at Rotterdam in the early morning of Jan 26th, I immediately had to prepare myself for the first festival screening in the afternoon. Not a lot of rest there.

Thursday, January 26, 2012

Rest in peace, Theo Angelopoulos

Theo Angelopoulos


Yesterday, just like many other times, I woke up to the beeping sounds of Facebook chat, alerting me of incoming messages.

It was a film festival programmer friend of mine, his message was this:

Edmund, this has to do with one of your favourite film topics, Theo Angelopoulos. He had just died in a traffic accident, ran over by a motorbike!

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Two of my shorts, LAST FRAGMENTS OF WINTER and GIRL IN THE WATER at Rotterdam International Film Festival 2012

After only a few days in Malaysia to celebrate Chinese New Year, I'm flying off again in less than 24 hours to Netherlands for the Rotterdam International Film Festival.

Both my short film LAST FRAGMENTS OF WINTER (making its European premiere) and another, GIRL IN THE WATER by Danish director Jeppe Ronde and my regular collaborator Woo Ming Jin ("THE TIGER FACTORY", "WOMAN ON FIRE LOOKS FOR WATER"), which I helped to produce and edit, will part of the WAITING FOR SNOW IN MY KAMPONG program.

Sunday, January 22, 2012

A simple reunion dinner @ my home (Chinese New Year 2012)

After a few days of shoot in Taipei, and then another few days in Hong Kong for the post-production session, I returned to Tokyo for half a day, before making my way back to Malaysia for Chinese New Year.

It was the morning of January 20th. Tokyo was snowing for the very first time in 2012.

Thursday, January 12, 2012

Hiroshi Teshigahara's films and Ikebana

It's been a busy week.

My friend Dawn Yang (she's also something of an unofficial mascot of this blog. Look at the 'most popular posts' on your right, people generally stumble onto this website because they were looking for her or the exposing of her alleged boyfriend) had just came to Tokyo for a visit, so I was showing her around. If you were following on Twitter, you'll spot these tweets.

Friday, January 06, 2012

My segment in '60 Seconds of Solitude in Year Zero' also mentioned in NEGATIV

This article by Dennis Vetter at the highly-regarded German film website NEGATIV came out just a few days after the Dec 22 screening of the omnibus film '60 Seconds of Solitude in Year Zero' (on Christmas Day, actually).

I saw this article shortly after it was published and browsed through it hoping that I could understand something with my limited German skills. Unfortunately, the only word I recognized was my own name.

So I ran this through Google Translation and here's a rough translation about what the article said regarding 'I DREAMT OF SOMEONE DREAMING OF ME', my contribution to the omnibus film.

Tuesday, January 03, 2012

I was mentioned in Hollywood Reporter's review of '60 Seconds of Solitude in the Year Zero'

It's a great way to start the year. The stunningly beautiful balloons of the Zojo-ji New Year Countdown. An epic dinner of desserts with Dawn Yang yesterday.



And today, on the 3rd day of 2012, Maggie Lee's review of 60 SECONDS OF SOLITUDE IN YEAR ZERO (omnibus film I participated in) on Hollywood Reporter had this to say about my segment "I Dreamt Of Someone Dreaming Of Me".

Sunday, January 01, 2012

Thousands of balloons in the air during the countdown to 2012 @ Zojo-ji Temple, Tokyo

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

Well, I wasn't expecting to end 2011 with such a downer of a post.

Therefore, I'm going to start this year with a bang, by showing you a video I shot of the countdown to 2012 at Zojo-ji Temple that I went to last night.

(... there was also a rather big earthquake right before I started writing this, when it was shaking, I was sitting on my bed, quietly wondered how serious would it get. And as I was thinking, the quake stopped. Apparently, it was a Magnitude 7.0 earthquake.)

But anyway, here's the video.

Saturday, December 31, 2011

A somewhat nightmarish dream I had to end the year 2011.

It's the last day of the year. I had a troubling dream this morning, even though my sleep was brief (9am to 1:30pm, yes my sleep patterns are odd).

Thursday, December 29, 2011

Kultuurikatel - The place where Andrei Tarkovsky shot STALKER

If you have read my epic previous post about the 60 SECONDS OF SOLITUDE IN YEAR ZERO screening held on the 22nd of December, I don't blame you if you've thought that my trip in Estonia climaxed during its first day.

I thought the same too as I left the Port of Tallinn on a boat, heading towards the venue of the closing ceremony. That was my last public screening of 2011, ending a very busy year when I had travelled around the film festival circuit almost every month. I would just kick back and relax, recharge my energies. I had a few more days in Tallinn, I expected to spend them in solitude since I was staying around longer than the other invited guests (I was scheduled to fly back to Tokyo on Christmas day). Explore Tallinn, soak in the festive atmosphere, I don't really celebrate Christmas, but the excitement of being half a world away would probably dampen the inevitable melancholy feeling that often plague my soul.

But then, as usual, life is full of little surprises. I then found out that the after-party was to be held in a place called Kultuurikatel. The exact place where Andrei Tarkovsky shot STALKER.

Monday, December 26, 2011

60 Seconds of Solitude At Year Zero screening @ Port of Tallinn

I was in Tallinn because of the omnibus film project 60 SECONDS OF SOLITUDE AT YEAR ZERO, the whole concept was 60 directors, 60 seconds each, so that everything comes together as a 1-hour omnibus film. Invited directors range from cinematic legends to exciting up-and-comers and to the utterly-obscure-but-somewhat-cute (me).

The film was supposed to be screened only once, on the 22nd of December, at the Port of Tallinn, and as the film was being screened, it was being burned as well, so there is no way this can be screened again.

Now, you can skip my colourful commentary and beautiful photos by watching the video now.

Sunday, December 25, 2011

Quick Tour in Tallinn Old Town

Merry Christmas.

Having a 7-hour layover in Amsterdam on my way back to Tokyo, so I'll recap my past few days in Tallinn.

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Off to Tallinn (Estonia) for the 60 SECONDS OF SOLITUDE IN YEAR ZEROscreening!

I DREAMT OF SOMEONE DREAMING OF ME 1


I'll be flying off to Estonia in a couple of hours. (by the time you're reading this, I'm probably already on the plane).

A month ago, I was invited to participate in the 60 SECONDS OF SOLITUDE IN YEAR ZERO omnibus project with a group of directors from all over the world. Most other directors involved in this are world-famous masters like Naomi Kawase, Park Chan Wook, Amir Naderi, Shinji Aoyama, Kim Ji-Woon, Tom Tywker, Pen-ek Ratanaruang, Brillante Mendoza and many others (see full list of directors). Being able to participate in this project with filmmakers whose works have inspired me so much is quite an honour, and also rather humbling. (I'm listed as a representative for both Malaysia and Japan, the other filmmaker representing Malaysia is my regular collaborator Woo Ming Jin).

Each director is supposed to make a 1-minute short film, so that when all our contributions are put together, it becomes a (hopefully awesome) one-hour omnibus film.

And there will only be ONE screening for this omnibus film, in Tallin, on the 22nd of December.